


The Past Is Another Colony

by Neffectual



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Hive Mind, M/M, Psychological Horror, Science
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-22
Updated: 2014-03-22
Packaged: 2018-01-16 13:36:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,607
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1349275
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Neffectual/pseuds/Neffectual
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Carlos begins to understand more about Night Vale. After all, they were all scientists once.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Past Is Another Colony

The most important thing to remember about leaving the past behind is to never look back, no matter how tempting it might be.

We were all scientists once.  
Hadn’t Cecil phrased it that way on the radio, one of the first days he had arrived? Listening for a bit of local colour, he’d picked up the signal and listened, smirking behind his hand at the small town jokes, the crap they played was fantastic – and then stopped as the weather poured over him in colours which tasted like the smell you get after rain. He’s never experienced the weather like that before, not in every sense, not left staring after it like his soul has been scoured clean and the rest of him has been washed away. He hasn’t felt like that since, either, not since he crossed the unseen, unknowable border of Night Vale and found himself wrapped up in the weird little mysteries which no one else seems to think are worth the effort. He doesn’t know what to expect anymore, and whilst he thinks that should scare him half to death, all it does is ensure that he wants to burrow under every rock, dig into every secret until he knows everything there is to know about the town. Everything there is to know about the people. But not everything there is to know about Cecil. Because thinking, it’s what a scientist does. And self-reliant – it’s the first thing a scientist is.

Cecil hasn’t been in his lab for years, squirreled away at the back of the house where he doesn’t have to see the beakers, the measuring equipment, the Geiger counter which never worked here anyway, all the remnants of a life he used to have, and which he can no longer touch. His days are over, and he now looks to Carlos, Carlos who has no idea how perfect a scientist he is, to take over. Carlos, who is a perfect scientist, and will make the perfect victim, and who will become the perfect citizen. Cecil doesn’t even open the door to the lab, isn’t sure where the key went, although he is certain that he does not wish to know. He does not miss it, the books, the long hours, the lab coats, he tells himself, and he is not in love with Carlos because he embodies all the things Cecil was once, when he was young and naive and thought Night Vale was exciting and would lead him to a great discovery. He tells himself this, nightly, and the red vans don’t come that morning, and he knows he has made a choice – but no one will tell him what it was.

Carlos has books lining the walls of his tiny apartment, and he notices Cecil glancing at them, curiously, so he explains – and feels like a fool, of course Cecil knows what a book is, he probably just hasn’t seen this many which aren’t municipally approved before, or maybe it’s the way they’re arranged, lines and spirals and squares, all over the rooms, flowing from one to the other like a river of knowledge and stories and truths and lies. Maybe Cecil just likes being in his house, Carlos doesn’t know, and there’s little more he can do but offer water – if the tap is giving water today – and a seat on the battered leather couch, and – Cecil kisses him. Carlos doesn’t know how this goes, not really, not beyond the awkward fumblings of a teenager at half past ten, knowing their parents are picking them up at eleven, seeing how far they can get in that last half hour of freedom. Cecil kisses like wind through the desert, shaping everything he touches into smooth swathes of space, like desperation, like the way the ground calls out for water, like the way the Dog Park refuses to exist. Cecil kisses like Night Vale, and in that moment, Carlos cannot think of any place better, anywhere he would rather be, any time he would rather stand in. 

The red van drops Cecil back at his house, muggy, confused, blood dripping from the corner of his mouth and the side of his head, bruises banding his arms and legs, his hair matted with blood and dirt. The driver gives him a big smile and a wave, before crying out that he’ll see Cecil soon. He hopes not. He staggers up the path to the front door and lets himself in, sagging down in the hallway and letting himself bleed on the carpet, which hums appreciatively. He is weak, tired, used and exhausted, and he did all of this for something, but he can no longer remember what. He took the fall for someone, but he cannot remember who. He let the red van take him, because otherwise it was going to take someone else, someone who meant something, someone who cared, someone who – was a scientist. Perfect Carlos, whose kisses tasted like re-education felt, and whose hands felt like solitary confinement tasted. Perfect Carlos, who dreamed he could find the reason for Night Vale, who dreamed there was reason to Night Vale, who had whispered in his ear and pressed his body to Cecil’s, who had brought them both to pleasure inexpertly, and now here’s Cecil, bleeding in his hallway. He’s only glad he got in off the porch, because honestly, what would the neighbours think? And what if Carlos came by? He had left rather rapidly, dressed in Carlos’ lab coat, rushing out to greet the van as it rounded the corner. He was the scientist, then, and they had stripped him of his coat and took him to City Hall and he became Cecil again, just a good citizen, just the Voice of Night Vale, the trusted one, the one they all believed. But for those few minutes, running to the van, lab coat flapping, he had felt young again.

Carlos awakens to an empty bed, and rolls over to lie in the bit of the mattress which sounds like singing mice, letting them force him upright and awake. His weekend lab coat is missing – it isn’t a weekend lab coat, none of them are, but Cecil said that one, so that one it is – and his front door is ajar. Looks like Cecil ran out, he thinks, maybe he’ll be back with breakfast. The hours are cold and slow, Night Vale time thick and sluggish, like treacle on a cold spoon, and he lies there into the darkness, and Cecil does not come back. Carlos wonders what it is he has done to deserve this, and then head to the lab, ready for another night or day – all the same here – of work, of readings, of statistics and strange substances in jars. The lab isn’t there. It hasn’t been smashed to pieces, or burnt down, or bulldozed, it just... isn’t there. There’s Big Rico’s pizza – the best pizza in town, and Carlos reminds himself his weekly slice is due – and then nothing. Just an old playground, roundabout moving, creaking in the heavy breeze, swings clinking, and the scent of forgotten childhood memories. The lab was never here. Carlos sits on a swing for a little while, idly rocking back and forth, wondering what he’s going to do now, until Cecil approaches.

“All those experiments, gone.”  
“You can make new ones.”  
“I have to have a lab.”  
“Why?”  
“I’m a scientist. That’s what a scientist has.”  
“We were all scientists once.”

The next time the red van comes, Carlos sits silently in the back of it, bag over his head, and waits, and waits, and waits, but Cecil never comes, Cecil never saves him, Cecil never whispers to him, or touches him where they’re sat next to each other. When they both stagger out of it, bleeding and dizzy and exhausted, they don’t look at each other, don’t speak, and turn in different directions, Carlos’ lab coat gone, and Cecil’s glasses smashed. For the first time, Carlos looks at Night Vale and sees it, sees it for what it is, sees the horrors beneath and the glazed looks on the townspeople, the way no one sees his blood dripping to the floor, or the way the sidewalk absorbs it, just like no one sees the lights above the Arby’s, or thinks it’s weird that someone grows invisible corn. He can see the way the blood feeds into the core of the town, running through gutters and sewers like lifeblood through veins, can see the beating heart of the Dog Park, and the Hooded Figures hovering like white blood cells, ready to attack. It’s a living, writhing whole, a rich colony where they are nothing but worker ants, and the queen, the queen is, the queen is - He can see what they were now, can recognise the faces, can see Einstein, and Tesla, and Curie, and a dozen other people who never chose to let the world work as it pleased, asked it countless questions until it broke down and answered them. He can see burn marks and bruises and welts, and hints of other things, too – safety goggles in a breast pocket, a Bunsen burner as a hood ornament, a Geiger counter as a baby toy, constantly clicking. He turns, looks back at Cecil, and sees only lines, converging, changing, twisting, nothing real, nothing solid. Cecil is curves of light, diffraction, reaction, longitudinal waves and quadratic equations and tied to everything, each worker turning as he passes, just a little. And Carlos hears those words again.  
“We were all scientists, once.”  
But what he is now, who can say?


End file.
